The Page Up Innovation Award recognizes Page Up members who develop and implement groundbreaking approaches that are used by their organizations to chart new pathways in the profession. The accomplishment was recently awarded at the 2023 Page Up Annual Conference in Atlanta.
Late last year, our profession was rocked by the advent of Generative AI, which has already begun to fundamentally alter corporate communications. As a result, the innovation award committee recognized Molly Rauzi, managing director and CIO at Gagen McDonald, as the 2023 Innovation Award winner. Her submission highlighted her team’s ability to innovate and onboard new generative AI technologies, even in the midst of being acquired by a larger organization.
“I do want to say, I had a little bit of an (advantage),” Molly explained. “Having grown up in the world of technology, when generative AI came around, I was very keen on how we could leverage it. But this is more a story about culture and leadership… In February, we took our digital strategy team at Gagen and completely re-energized and re-focused ourselves on generative AI. The team was so brave throughout the company, looking for use cases, looking for new opportunities.”
In addition to the award winner, the innovation award committee selected Chrys Kefalas, managing vice president of brand at National Association of Manufacturing, as the runner-up, with specific compliments to the impact his project had on his organization.
“Chrys’ submission was for a program called ‘Many Creators Wanted,’” Innovation award committee co-chair Ethan McCarty explained. “It was an effort to get young people more interested in the skilled trades and manufacturing. It resulted in 84% of the 11,000 students who participated, having an increased interest in careers in manufacturing.”
Watch the Page Up Innovation Award ceremony from the Page Up Annual Conference.
he innovation award committee was torn between two impressive submissions. As a result, they recognized Megan DiSciullo as the runner up – a first for the Page Up Innovation Award. Megan launched PwC‘s Commtech stack, and created a digital upskilling program.
Dan Nestle of LIXIL was recognized with this year’s Page Up Innovation Award for pushing boundaries and driving progress in their organizations and our profession.
Dan’s initiative at LIXIL, helped them build a virtual team from across geographies and organizational silos, brought marketing technology to bear in Communications, and drove a months-long agile project that continuously adapted to the way audiences responded. The campaign was successful from a thought leadership perspective, generating more than 1.6M impressions of LIXIL content and 3K+ visits to the campaign landing page from LinkedIn Sponsored Media. You can read more about Dan’s award-winning work here.
Jennifer Leeman, Tapestry
See the acceptance ceremony hosted by Ethan McCarty and Tom Martin here.
Gina Judge of PepsiCo and Gabrielle Poshadlo of Bedrock were recognized with this year’s Page Up Innovation Award for pushing boundaries and driving progress in their organizations and our profession.
Thanks to Gina’s work, PepsiCo acted as a catalyst that not only invested in communities, but also leveraged its communications and marketing power, and encouraged all of its stakeholders to give, ultimately multiplying the impact. Learn more about her award-winning work here.
Gabrielle’s work demonstrates a long term strategy that was born in a pandemic that delivered positive reputational results, and made a real difference for Detroit small businesses and the patrons they serve. Read more about it here.